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Category: Legal History

Homer, Paulus, and the Evolution of Economic Exchange

by David Fox, Professor of Common Law, University of Edinburgh

Introduction

The opening text of Book XVIII of Justinian’s Digest, on the contract of purchase, quotes an excerpt from Paulus’ Commentary on the Edict.[1]  In this text, Paulus develops a legal test for distinguishing two kinds of exchange: the contract of purchase (emptio) on the one hand and the contract of barter (permutatio) on the other.  Purchase, he says, consists in one party paying a money price (pretium) in exchange for the thing (merx) that is promised and delivered by the other party.  By contrast, a barter is a transaction where the parties promise and exchange two non-monetary things.

Paulus goes on to develop a sharp definition of money for the purposes of his rule.  The monetary price, he says, should consist in coins (nummi) struck in authorised form by the public mint.  For Paulus, the delivery of coined money on one side of the exchange marks the identifying characteristic of a contract of purchase.

Justinian authoritatively accepted Paulus’ view.[2]  His ruling put beyond dispute that purchase and barter were distinct contracts in the revived Roman law of the sixth century AD, and that each had to be enforced by its own distinct actions.  In so ruling, he settled an old disagreement between the Sabinian and Proculian schools of juristic thought.[3]

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Books – Part of Our Legal Culture

by Professor Reinhard Zimmermann, Emeritus (Director) of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg

“Mr. Booker, however, would review such a book as Lady Carbury’s ‘Criminal Queens’ without bestowing much trouble on the reading. He could do it almost without cutting the book, so that its value for purposes of after sale might not be injured”: Anthony Trollope, ‘The Way We Live Now’, Chapter 1. 

 (i) Modern academic life is characterized by an apparently unstoppable trend towards specialization. At the same time, we are faced with a proliferation of legal literature. It becomes more and more difficult to follow developments in areas not directly relevant to one’s own field of research. (ii) Contrary to the natural sciences and economics, law is a field of research where the writing of books constitutes a long-established and essential means of producing knowledge. In a number of countries (Germany and Italy among them) a scholar has to write two books in order to qualify for an academic career. In other countries (England and Scotland, for example) an aspiring academic usually has to write a PhD thesis which, in a revised version, is often subsequently published as a book. (iii) With so much writing going on, nobody can read all new law books, even those in a limited field such as contract law, or constitutional law. 

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Primary rights and liability in delict

By John MacLeod, Senior Lecturer in Private Law, University of Edinburgh 

Since the turn of the 21st century, Common Lawyers have discussed the basis of tortious liability extensively.[1] In particular, defences have been mounted against instrumentalism (i.e. considering law in terms of social policy). Much of the analysis turns on the idea that tort is about responding to infringements of primary rights (or to breach of primary duties). Primary rights are rights (and primary duties are duties) which do not arise from infringement of another right. They are contrasted with secondary rights, which do arise from such infringements. Property rights or rights to contractual performance are primary; rights to compensation for culpable damage or breach of contract are secondary.

If torts are thus conceptualised, the reasons which justify a primary right explain the wrongfulness of the tortious action and so support liability. Justifications for primary rights can vary and need not depend on some general logic within tort law.

What, if anything, does this literature mean for Scotland?

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The Authority of Doctrinal Scholarship

by Claudio Michelon, Professor of Philosophy of Law, University of Edinburgh

Never has so much been written about the law by so many. This phenomenon can be perceived across many jurisdictions and in practically all areas of law. This growth results from the confluence of many factors, among which the fact that there is progressively more law to be explained, analysed and critiqued, and the broadened access to legal education which, in turn, allows for greater specialization in fields and subfields of the law. The structure of legal academia, in particular the imperative to “publish or perish” surely also plays a role here. But whatever the causes, we are left with a hefty corpus of legal literature. Thus, it is perhaps worth thinking about what, in this ocean of legal writing, could possess authority, and why.

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Leases and the Law of Domestic Service: Delving into Scotland’s Employment Law History

by Dr. Alice Krzanich, Lecturer in Law and Legal History, University of Aberdeen

The history of employment law in Scotland is an under-researched topic. While some aspects of law and labour in Scotland’s past have been examined, others have been barely touched at all. Moreover, while many elements of employment law in modern-day Scotland are similar or identical to those in England and Wales, Scots law has its own distinct history concerning labour and employment. This is due to Scotland’s unique legal institutions and juristic traditions. There is consequently a need to investigate the history of employment law in Scotland more fully and to tease out some of the themes of its development.

This blog entry illustrates some of that distinct legal heritage by examining the employment of domestic servants in early nineteenth-century Scotland. In particular, it shows how Scots contract law regulating domestic service shared certain analytical features with the law of leases in the period c. 1800–1850. This may seem surprising, as the employment of domestic servants may (outwardly at least) seem to have little directly in common with leases of property. Yet this analysis will reveal commonalities between the two, resulting from the influence of Roman law alongside customary practices. Moreover, the law of leases was not the only area of private law that the contract of domestic service shared connections with in the nineteenth century; it was also often conceived as part of the law of familial obligations. This raises further questions about the nature of historical Scottish master-servant law, which this analysis will highlight.

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